I need a camera lens obscuring thingie

[Dee Ann]

Hi.

This may sound a little odd but I don't know who to ask or where to look.

I have a bit of a problem. I have a number of security cameras installed around and in my home. They are wired so moving them isn't an option. And moving them still would not solve the problem anyway.

What the problem is follows,

A number of years ago I put these cameras up in place. Everything was fine and dandy at the time. They've been great and it is very comforting to be able to look up and see what's going on outside around the house. But, there are a number of street lights outside.

Between one of my cameras and one of the streetlights, is one that is primary and important, there has been a large oak tree in the way for years. The oak tree is evergreen in our tropic climate and it always blocks the light from the street light. The street light was never even an issue before as it was simply blocked and was not viewable by the camera.

The other day, a new neighbor who just moved into the house where the tree is (next door to me) cut down the oak tree and now the street light is blaring in all it's brilliant glory right in the middle of my primary camera. It blinds the camera. The camera sees the bright light, freaks out and adjusts itself and everything else excluding the bright light fades into the darkness.

Just like driving at night, oncoming headlights blind you can you can't see anything else, well that's what's happening now to my camera.

So after a few frustrating nights of not being able to see on that camera, I got the idea of blocking part of the lens with something. So I got a piece of black plastic and taped it over part of the lens, blocking the light and restoring the camera to a somewhat usable state. But when daylight arrives part of the lens is blocked and it's really annoying.

Now I have some very, very minor experience in electronics, I can work on pc's and I put all the cameras in myself. I know how to solder and I'm pretty good and improvising things. But I'm far, far from being a whiz. I'm just a bit geekish I guess..

But I had an idea of building some sort of device that can move something in front of the lens at night and lift it back up out of the way when the sun comes up.

What I was thinking of was using one of those little motors out of a toy car.
My son left behind a bunch of remote control cars and trucks. They were steerable and I've seen the little thing in them that moves the steering.

I was thinking that one of those could do the job.

But what I have no idea of is how to do it.
The camera has an RG6 cable coming from it and there is also a cat5e wire that carries 24vac and 12vdc to it. The 12vdc is not being used but is available. There are two sets of wires that are unused and can carry 5vdc to the camera if needed.

There must be a way to put some sort of a little eye that knows when it's day and night and triggers the motor to drop the "eye patch" in front of the lens when it gets dark and and lift it in the morning.

I know it sounds weird and probably doesn't make much sense but I'm really hoping someone understands what I'm getting at here and what I'm trying to do.

If someone can tell me *how* to build such a little device, I can do it.
It needs to be small to fit in a camera housing. Currently the camera is inside the house and is peeking through a window but I'm planning on putting it into a camera housing and moving it outdoors in the next few weeks.
So small is good. The smaller the better. And I have a nice selection of remote control trucks to steal parts from. I just don't have the controls for them anymore. So that's why the thing needs to be self contained and automatic.
It can of course draw power from the wiring that's already there.

I would deeply appreciate some guidance on this little project, I simply don't know how to start.

Thanks so much!

 

[Mikebits]

I get what you are asking for and I have a few comments. From an electronics point this would be quite simple, all you need is a simple RC servo motor, **broken link removed**, and a few misc circuits. The difficult part I see is mechanical issues, and rigging all this up around your camera. Further more (You mentioned tropics) since you are in a rainy environment you would have a problem of weather proofing all this new stuff. I am no camera expert, but have you thought of getting a special lens that might filter out the glare like a polar lens? Maybe you can call the camera company and ask customer support if they have a lens to solve your issue.

 

[john1]

Hi Dee-Ann,

Yes. Your problem is well known.

As for the "some sort of a little eye that knows when it's day and night", that would be a light sensor.
I would suggest that it be mounted with a small tube so that it is actually monitoring the lamp, if you
want to do this, although you could just actuate your device with a push button or switch next to the
camera controls anyway, without making any light sensing stuff.

As for the shielding from the glare,
Yes i think you could use one of those things from a toy car that moves steering or such.

As for positioning the obscuration or shield, i dont think you could do that inside the camera.
Unless its some kind of camera ive never met before, my guess is that it would have to be external.

Your logic is quite correct, and your suggested remedy is workable.
See what others say, there may be things around that can do this sort of thing easier.

John

 

[john1]

If the camera can be mouted a littler higher,
so that it tilts down slightly,
then maybe a simple hood could be made to shield it from the street-lamp.

John

 

[john1]

If it is a sodium type lamp,
there may well be colour-filters which will very effectively remove the glare.

Sodium types shine light out on a very restricted frequency,
so there may even be filters that are made for this purpose.

John

 

[john1]

Hi,

I got a piece of black plastic and taped it over part of the lens, blocking the light and restoring the camera to a somewhat usable state.

You said this looks through a window ...
you would do better to put a piece of tape on the window, than the camera lens.
If you're lucky you might find thats all you need to do.

John

 

[Dee Ann]

Oh lots of interesting ideas!

Well, I tried a few things.

I have a Canon DSLR with a circular polarizing filter on it. I tried putting that in front of the camera. No luck with that. Didn't help.

I have a pair of 3D glasses left over from Avatar. I tried putting them in front of the camera and rotated them at every angle I could, both lenses. Still no luck.

The street light is an amberish color. I can take a photo of it in action and try to analyze it in a paint program to see where in the color spectrum it is.
I don't know how to do that but I understand the concept.
I would be thrilled to pieces if there was a filter that blocks out JUST those annoying street lights and lets all other light pass through unimpeded. That would be totally cool!

Here's a screen shot of the basic problem. This is with the plastic down in front of the lens. The picture looks fuzzy on here for some reason but on the monitor it's really sharp and clear.



I highlighted the obscured area with faint yellow lines to indicate the thing.
You can also see the yellowish tinge from the street light.
I know nothing at all about it, it's put up and owned by the city and never paid it any attention until Mr. Neighbor cut down that tree and the light blared up on my screen like the morning sun.

As to the tropical thing. It's not really tropical, I'm in SE Texas right on the coast. At my age it just feels tropical.

I plan on putting the cameras outdoors in the next week or so. I still have to build the enclosures for them. I'm using PVC pipe to put them in with a glass window in the end them mounted under the eaves of the house out of direct sunlight and rain. I do intend to assure that they are 100% waterproof as we get frequent hurricanes. I'm pretty good with crafts so this should be pretty simple to do. Ha! Famous last words...

I don't know that angling the camera *then* will be an option or feasible. I haven't tried yet. Where it is now, in the window, it's not an option. To angle it down enough to lose the light would put the camera just staring down at the ground. I also need the camera to continue to be able to see all the way down the street as it always has. Not only do I need to be able to see directly out front but I like to be able to see everything, everywhere. I can see when the postman parks his jeep at the corner or when one of my moron ex's parks down on the corner as he thinks up ungood things. It gives me the edge and time to call 911 long before they can get near. Thank goodness I've only had two incidents and both times the cameras bought me the time I needed to stay safe.

As to the filters, does anyone know what they are and where I could look for one? I never heard of such a thing before.

Thanks so much!

 

[Mr RB]

I would just extend that tape horizontally for full way, keeping it at the rooftop level. That won't obscure anything on the ground, only stuff in the air (and the streetlight!).

 

[HiTech]

I don't know the details of this camera in question but if the lens can be removed from it, purchase one that has an adjustable iris and adjust it accordingly. If it's a fixed lens on the camera, then that's not an option. Surveillance cameras are so affordable these days that you might just as well replace it with one that self-adjusts under varying light conditions. A lot easier than trying to build a circuit and light reducing contraption infront of the lens. Sometimes it's just more practical, sensible, and more econimical in the long run to buy new with the necessary feature included.

 

[Dee Ann]

Hi again,

The cameras I have are American Dynamics ADCA330CN. I have 6 of them outside and 6 misc. other cameras inside. They do not have the auto iris feature.
I didn't get that for two reasons, #1, money and #2, I did not think I needed that feature.

Here's the sales brochure for the camera that I'm having this problem with.

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2010/01/12276.pdf

Thanks!

edit:

I took a photo of the guilty street light and used Gimp to display the spectrum in the picture.

It's hard to make out the little spectrum box but it's pretty much flat except a tiny bit of blue at the far left and a big spike of yellow at the end.
The puzzling thing is that the yellow spike is capped with a red spike.
I have no idea what that's about.
Maybe someone else will understand what it is.

Maybe this is the kind of street light that can be filtered out?

Thanks again!

 

[schmitt trigger]

Does your camera have a threaded lens?
If so, you could attach one of those progressive (gradual) filters made by Hoya, Tiffen or B&W. The spectral opposite of yellow is blue. A deep-blue tinted gradual filter would block out most of the offending light on the top, while allowing the bootom to come thru. As an added bonus, during the day, your skies will look nicer!

 

[Mickster]

If the camera is inside the house, weather-proofing is not a problem.
A very simple, but inelegant, solution could be to use a clock module placed above the camera and attach a semi-circular mask to the hour hand.
The mask could be made out of overhead projector transparent sheet, with the blocking section easily adjusted....

 

[Dragon Tamer]

it surprises me a little that your camera does not adjust itself for the bright light. most cameras will adjust their picture based on how much light is coming in. The reason that your picture looks fuzzy with the plastic "thingy" in the way, is because your camera is trying to refocus on an object that is so close. my simple solution is to put a cover over top of the lens and have it extend about 3 inches from the main part of the camera. then tilt your camera down until the street light is no longer visible in the camera and you should be fine. this solution is a simple one and should work with whatever kind of camera you are using. i am not a camera expert but i have dealt with this kind of problem before.

 

[Ross Craney]

it surprises me a little that your camera does not adjust itself for the bright light. most cameras will adjust their picture based on how much light is coming in. The reason that your picture looks fuzzy with the plastic "thingy" in the way, is because your camera is trying to refocus on an object that is so close. my simple solution is to put a cover over top of the lens and have it extend about 3 inches from the main part of the camera. then tilt your camera down until the street light is no longer visible in the camera and you should be fine. this solution is a simple one and should work with whatever kind of camera you are using. i am not a camera expert but i have dealt with this kind of problem before.

If it's a full bodied camera (as against a dome) , or even a lipstick camera it would normally have a sunshield on the external housing. As the dragon said , extend the sunshield out & adjust the camera downwards until the streetlamp is out of vision. If you have a fixed iris lens the light will cause "whiteout" where the light saturates the optical sensor & the screen goes white other than a few shaddows. However in this case with strong direct light to the camera , an Auto-iris lens will not help. the camera will see a very strong light source & close the iris to compensate. This will result in the light source becoming marginally clearer but everything else will become black. Even a lens with backlight compensation will not hepl with such a strong light source on a background of darkness. Welcome to the world of outdoor CCTV where people watch too many spy movies & they all know the capabilities of cameras.
Wish I could be more help but I think you need to look for a compromise. The radio control thing won't work unless you can ensure there is no freeplay in the mechanical side of things.

 

[Dee Ann]

Hi,

Yes, the lens does unscrew and is totally removable.

The camera is inside looking out a window but that will change next week as I'm relocating it to outdoors as soon as I make a waterproof housing for it.

Tilting the camera down enough so that it can't see the street light makes it stare down at the ground.

The camera is not an auto-focus, it's a fixed focus that I had to set by hand by using a small monitor at the camera. I set the camera focus before I placed the thing in front of the lens.

Here's a daytime view from the camera, you can see piles of limbs at the curb from the tree he butchered up and the light pole is barely visible behind one of the piles as well.



Anyway, so most of the solutions tend to suggest that I aim the camera down or block the lens somehow with something.

Tilting the camera down just won't work as I don't want to stare at my front yard all the time and the other reason being that there is an opposing camera facing the other direction. On a quad split screen the two cameras occupy the two upper frames. By carefully aligning them, the street is lined up properly and evenly so that as cars drive by I see a continuous picture and the car is visible all the way from one street corner to the opposite street corner . There is no blind spot in the middle, just one big panoramic view of the entire street.

The lower left quadrant is a static view of my front porch and the lower right quadrant is a dynamic sequence of the remaining cameras that cover another view of the front porch, the back yard and several cameras that are in various rooms of the house.

But having the two cameras aligned so as to show an unbroken, panoramic view of the entire street, corner to corner with no blind spots is really important.

Being that the cameras that currently peek through windows are going outside next week, I really need to come up with something.

There is a switch on the camera I can flip to change the sensitivity of it at night but by doing that it effectively becomes night blind and thus useless. Seeing at night is just as important to me as seeing in the daytime. I sleep with a monitor on at the foot of my bed and I can wake up and peek at the screen anytime and know 100% everything going on around and inside my house. I have other monitors around the house that also stay on around the clock so no matter which room I'm in I can always look up and know what I need to know and feel safe.

I may sound paranoid but I've been the victim of domestic violence and was stabbed once by an ex. I have good reason to be aware at all times of what's going on.

Anyway...

Thanks guys, I love your ideas, I know we'll find one that will do the trick soon, you guys are really smart and I needed some fresh brainpower on this.

 

[HarveyH42]

Hi.

This may sound a little odd but I don't know who to ask or where to look.

I have a bit of a problem. I have a number of security cameras installed around and in my home. They are wired so moving them isn't an option. And moving them still would not solve the problem anyway.

It needs to be small to fit in a camera housing. Currently the camera is inside the house and is peeking through a window but I'm planning on putting it into a camera housing and moving it outdoors in the next few weeks.

I have video cameras as well, all self installed. As camera prices have dropped over the years, I've changed them a few times, added more. Currently, I'm using day/night cameras, color in the daytime, B/W at night. They automatically adjust for bright light, to a point. You can't point them directly at the source of light. Some of my older cameras had manual adjustments for bright lights. If you have a brand/model number, you might find some help by looking them up. See if you can point the camera, so the light isn't so direct on the lens, maybe slightly down, or to one side. Instead of blocking the lens, how about a visor to block the light source?

 

[Dee Ann]

This is one of the "see outdoors" cameras I use. It *is* slated to be moved outdoors next week.

Here's a sales brochure on the camera. https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2010/01/12276-1.pdf

Again, aiming the camera differently isn't really an option because there are two that align to provide a unified panoramic view of the entire street out front.

That's a patched up version taken from two different times of the day.
I made the snaps from full screen rather than in the typical quad screen so the details would show better. I didn't align them very well.
When I move the cameras outside I'll have them in perfect alignment for a much better result and with having the darn window frames in view.

 

[Ross Craney]

It appears to me that at least 30% of your pic is of the sky & houses across the road. When you get them outside put them as high as you can & you will have scope for adjusting them in such a way that the streetlight is out of picture. Your panourama may not be quite as good as it was but there are things you have no control over so the name of the game is compromise. I imagine if the neighbours knew how far the cameras were looking they might have something to say anyway.

 

[Dee Ann]

It appears to me that at least 30% of your pic is of the sky & houses across the road. When you get them outside put them as high as you can & you will have scope for adjusting them in such a way that the streetlight is out of picture. Your panourama may not be quite as good as it was but there are things you have no control over so the name of the game is compromise. I imagine if the neighbours knew how far the cameras were looking they might have something to say anyway.

I replied earlier to a number of other posts all in one and included some photos of my cameras but it seems to be missing for some reason.

Anyway..

Well, my neighbors and the police do know I have the cameras and often times will come ask me if I recorded an event, there have been robberies, vandalism and other naughty goings on around here.

One neighbor has asked me to keep an eye on his house in the afternoons because his son gets home from school alone before he gets home from work. So I keep an eye open to make sure that his son stays safe there. I'm babysitting the really easy way..

Not one neighbor has ever complained, all of them have told me they feel better knowing that cameras are watching and recording. I haven't really helped solve any big crimes yet as the last time there was an event (someone robbed a number of houses all in one night) I was in bed asleep and I did not yet have a DVR to do recordings.

 

[john1]

Hi Dee-Ann,

Now that you have shown a pic of the offending lamp,
i can see that as i thought it is a sodium type lamp.

These give off almost all of their output in one small band of the visible spectrum.
(thats the high spike of yellow in your pic.)

There are filters which will try to block just this section of the spectrum,
trouble is of course that if thats the main source of lighting for that area,
then they also reduce the light from the stuff thats being lit up.

However from your pictures it seems that there are other lights in the area too,
so filtering out that section of spectrum should be a possibility.

Heres a url to a page worth looking at
**broken link removed**
Its mainly for star-gazers, but it does mention the usefullness of some filters against sodium glare.

:Quote:
The stronger filter (which is too strong for any decent astronomy sites) but may be of interest to city dwellers cuts the D-line by about a factor of 100000. This is sufficient to look up at a street lamp and see no yellow light! Unfortunately, it also loses continuum light equal to more than one stellar magnitude at a dark site.
:Un-quote:

The D-line refers to the high yellow spike, as shown in one of your pics.
These filters will also reduce the other light, but not by much,
you should be able to compensate with brightness and/or contrast.

Regards, John